Critical Role: Ragged Chorus
by Eponymous Rose
Summary: She's their healer; she patches wounds, sets bones, cures disease. It's just that sometimes, you know, things get a little more complicated. Pike pulls her family from the brink.


It was early. They were still figuring out their rhythm.

Pike was lost in the crowd, in the swirl of blades and the flare of arrows and the peppering of arcane sparks, and she stumbled back a few paces from the fray, clutching her medallion, listening for cries of pain above the thrumming of her heart in her ears. No time. Arm up, shield deflecting a blade on the downswing with bone-jarring impact. Someone yelled. Friend or foe? Flickering images, discrete moments. The blade coming down for another strike. Spray of blood. An arrow. She jerked back a step, locked eyes across the clearing with a half-orc readying an axe. Drew her hands together, whispered in shaking voice, felt a surge of divine energy tickling through her fingers.

A bolt of lightning arced past at the same moment, drawing her attention from the moment of impact; Grog's snarl was more annoyance than pain, and she heard Tiberius yelp, "Sorry about that!"

Percy's voice snapped above the fray, "I can't fire when you're in the way, Vax!"

"Everyone, step back!" Keyleth, her voice breaking with the effort of making herself heard. "Come on, I can finish this, just step back!"

Scanlan chimed in with an uncharacteristic edge to his voice, "Good thought, but I don't think that's an option right now!"

Pike took a step back, but in the uneven roll of high grasses she couldn't even really tell what Keyleth meant by 'back', and by the time she'd decided on putting her back to a tree and hoping for the best, it was already over; one great swing of Grog's axe, a volley of arrows, the last few notes of a distracting song. The bandits were sprawled on the ground in various states of death and unconsciousness, and then everybody was talking at once, a chatter ramped to unbearable volume by adrenaline and fear and frustration at their missteps. Pike took a moment, counted the people converging on the bloodbath with clenched jaws and stiff spines.

Frowned. Counted again.

The dread was just starting to hit her in earnest when Vex yelled, " _Pike_!"

Her name, clear and ringing, cut through the commotion, and Pike ran, dropping her shield and mace along the way, already grasping at her holy symbol, probing the cool metal for warmth with her fingertips. Vex was standing on the grass next to her brother, bent over with hands hovering just over his shoulders like she was trying to decide whether or not to touch him, Trinket nosing worriedly beside her. Vax was on his knees, daggers in the grass beside him, hunched over so his forehead was nearly touching the dirt, right arm clutched tight against his chest, and as Pike approached she could hear him whispering under his breath, in a quick and ragged cadence, "Fuck fuck _fuck_."

"Is he okay?" Keyleth called, and Scanlan muttered something sarcastic that Pike opted to ignore as she cupped a hand under Vax's chin.

"Hi, Vax," she said. "What do you say, you okay?" His eyes weren't quite focusing, brimming with reactionary tears, and he was shaking, skin jumping in little twitches away from her touch. She could see, now, the blood seeping into his armor, the jagged tear in the leather through his shoulder and down toward his chest, the glint of exposed bone beneath. His collarbone was shorn clean through. Whispering a soft prayer, she focused on a pulse of healing energy, watched Vex's hands finally come down to steady Vax when he swayed with the force of it.

Flesh and muscle and bone knit slowly under Pike's hand, leaving a ragged and vivid scar; Vax blinked, took an experimental breath, then glanced up at her with something uncomfortably close to awe. She tried a crooked smile, said again, "You okay?"

"Better than the guy with the big fucking axe," he said, hoarsely. "Thank you, Pike." He was still cradling the arm, she noticed, and no wonder. She pressed another spell into his shoulder, felt him shudder in reaction, but she was pretty sure she'd exhaust her own capabilities before she managed to patch him up good as new. The wild look in his eyes was being gradually supplanted by the heaviness of exhaustion. He fumbled forward with his left hand for his daggers.

"Good job, brother," Vex said. There was an edge in her voice that belied the softness of her gaze. "You're getting very good at picking out the people in a crowd who're most capable of turning you to jelly."

"Well, you know, I sort of figured I'd have backup. More fool me."

Pike, glancing up, caught the way Vex's eyebrows furrowed for a moment. "I'm sorry, but I was a little busy with the guy hurling daggers at me."

Vax blinked, started to raise his right hand, then flinched and raised his left instead, palm out. "No, not you, I didn't mean... Vex'ahlia, wait."

"I'm going to go see if there are any stragglers," Vex announced to the now-silent group, and marched toward the edge of the woods, Trinket trailing after her. With a grimace, Vax doubled over again, hiding his face with his left hand.

"I thought Percy was in charge of covering Vax," Tiberius said, helpfully, and Pike winced.

"I didn't-" Percy sputtered for a moment, combing a hand back through his hair and leaving streaks of soot amid the white. "I couldn't cover him when he was practically throwing himself at the target!"

"I had no idea your aim was so erratic, Percival," Vax muttered, and Pike reached out to put a warning hand on his knee.

Percy, catching the tone of the murmur if not the words, turned away, fidgeting with his gun. "I'm not going to argue about this with you."

"And speaking of targets," Grog put in, "I'm not big on having to watch my back for, like, freaky magic lightning. It's real distracting." Pike turned; Grog was looming up behind Tiberius, crossing his arms in the way he'd picked up from Wilhand the first time he'd caught Grog and Pike emptying out his wine cellar. It was a formidable sight, but Tiberius, busily poking at the armor of one of the dead half-orcs, was completely oblivious to the threat.

"I mean, if anybody cares, I had a plan," Keyleth said. "In fact, my plan was sort of The Plan. I thought we were sticking to it."

Scanlan, carding what looked like half-orc blood out of his hair, scowled. "That went out the window when the big guy started hitting me with my own shawm. And you just froze up."

Wincing, Vax lowered his hand from his face. Pike heard the way his breathing caught when he started to straighten up, but his voice was steady. "It was a good plan."

"Vax thinks it was a good plan," Keyleth said.

"A ringing endorsement from the man who just hugged a battleaxe for no apparent reason," Percy murmured, and then raised a hand. "No, I'm not arguing about this, I'm not getting pulled into this."

"To an impartial observer, it really does sound like you are," Scanlan said.

Vax pulled himself to his feet with a gasp, swaying, his right arm still pulled up against his chest. "Look. I just want to be sure that next time somebody has my fucking back, all right? Because otherwise maybe Vex and I were better off alone."

Vex, standing at the edge of the clearing, turned at this, her brow furrowed. "That's unfair."

"I really don't think it is," Vax said, and extended his right arm partway, trembling with the effort, to point at Grog. "That one could've been killed if Tibsy's aim had been a little more off, and then where would we have been? I mean, he could've snuffed any one of us out because he wasn't paying attention."

Tiberius glanced up, finally, a spark in his eyes. "Don't push me."

Vax gave a wordless shrug, followed by a strained laugh at what must have been an immensely painful motion. "We're a great team. I can see why we work so well together. What a useless bunch of shitheads we are."

"We won the fight," Keyleth put in, hesitantly.

Vax turned to look at her, pivoted on one foot to glance over at his sister, said, "I'm going for a walk," and took two steps before doubling over with a hiss of pain.

"All right," Pike said, softly, and then, louder, "All right! That's enough!"

She was definitely expecting Grog's gaze to snap to her instantly, because he'd always listened when she used that tone of voice, but she wasn't prepared for the entire group to go silent and stare at her with wide eyes. There was an unfamiliar warmth at her chest, too, a little surge of amusement centered in the medallion over her heart. She blinked, took a breath, and bellowed, "Sit down!"

Scanlan did it immediately, and after a moment Grog sullenly plunked onto his ass. The others exchanged baffled glances until she said, again, "Sit! Down!"

Even on the ground most of them were still higher than eye-level with her, which seemed patently unfair, so Pike hauled herself up onto the chest of one of the downed half-orcs. It took her a bit of clambering, which gave her plenty of time to realize she had no idea what she wanted to say, no idea what she _could_ say to all of these very impressive, very angry, very broken people.

Clutching at her medallion, she turned in a slow semi-circle from her new vantage point, surveying them. Well, it wasn't like she could make things much worse. "I think we're here for a reason," she said, and frowned when Keyleth glanced away. "I don't mean, not like that, I mean, we're all here, right now, and we have this chance to really do something good that we couldn't do on our own. That's why we're all here, right?"

"I'm just here for the skull-bashing," Grog said, but he flushed when she glanced over at him. Added, under his breath, "and the something-good, sure."

"Right," Pike said. "Okay. I'm still learning what it's like to be a fighter, to be one of you. I know a lot of you have trained since you were very young to do exactly this kind of work. I just sort of got pulled along in your wake. But I'm figuring out that there's a place for me here, and I'm happy to help where I can and make sure you're all still on your feet at the end of the day."

"And we are very grateful for that," Vax said, softly.

"Well, good, because I'm pretty good at it and don't plan on leaving anytime soon." That got a couple laughs, and Pike grinned back. "Look, we're all wound up, we're hurt, we're tired, we need a good night's sleep. And maybe we need to communicate a little better. Just because we're together doesn't mean we know how to fight together yet, and I think... I think that's okay. I think that'll come with time and training. Nobody gets everything right the first time, no matter how good they are." She glanced over at Vex. "You and your brother must've had some problems with your different fighting styles early on."

Vax startled her by breaking into a grin; Vex groaned and put her face in her hands, mumbling, "I shot him in the ass once by mistake."

At that, Grog beamed, Scanlan's eyebrows climbed toward his hairline, and Keyleth hid a smile in the palm of her hand.

"To be fair," Vax said, "I was being so stealthy even she didn't notice me."

"Hah. The bandit was picking you up to throw you into a tree," Vex said. "I totally saved your scrawny ass. But after that I figured out the way you move and now I won't shoot you ever again. Not accidentally, anyway."

Vax's smile faltered. "Was that a threat?"

"We may have to compare notes on ranged attacks when Vax is in play," Percy said to Vex, who winked back at him.

"Because if that was a threat I think I should maybe be a little worried," Vax said. "You're so much smarter and stronger than me, after all..."

"Oh, shut up. I'm glad you're not dead."

"Love you too."

"Keyleth," Pike said, and waited until she looked up from her hands. "It was a good plan, but things changed, so we had to move on. I know from training with Grog that sometimes you have to learn to be spontaneous in battle."

Keyleth glanced over hopefully to Grog, who stared back with his head tilted to one side. "Oh," Keyleth said. "That means just don't think too much."

"Oh, that, sure." Picking his teeth with a twig, Grog smirked. "I can teach you some of that. Maybe a few shots of firewater at the next tavern-"

"That's a terrible idea," Tiberius said, at the same moment as Percy added, "That's an excellent idea."

"I'm sorry, Scanlan," Keyleth said. "I froze up. I feel really bad."

Scanlan sighed. "No, it's okay, we're all still learning, here. Not all of us are as wise as Pike."

"Well, that's true," Pike said, and paused a little awkwardly when the expected laughs didn't come. "Um. Anyway. Tiberius?"

"I'll pay closer attention," Tiberius muttered, without looking up from where he was shuffling a handful of magical components around in the satchel at his side. "I didn't do it on purpose."

Grog managed to hold onto his menacing glower for only a moment before it broke into a smile. "Nah, it's fine. Go ahead and hit me sometimes. I can take it."

"I can't," Scanlan chimed in, raising one finger.

Tiberius snorted, but Pike caught a hint of a draconic grin on his face. "Noted."

"Anyway," Pike said, "we're a team. I know it's only been a short while, and you all knew this stuff before I ever came along, but I'd just like to say that I think, with a little work, we might be able to make this team a family."

And, wow, okay, every single one of them flinched at that word, 'family'. Some of them were better at hiding it than others, but there was a ripple of reaction that extended from Grog's clenched jaw beside her all the way to the edge of the clearing, where Vex buried a white-knuckled hand in the fur on Trinket's back. All right. Okay.

Pike rubbed at her chin, then sighed, hopping down off the body and pacing over to retrieve her shield and mace. "I mean, it couldn't hurt to try."

With that, whatever weird spell held them all in thrall of her for the last few moments seemed to fade, and the rumbling of voices gradually picked up again, easier and less edged than before. Pike cast around a bit aimlessly for a moment while the others picked the bodies clean of valuables-at least some portion of which would be returned to their rightful owners, probably-and, self-consciously, backed off behind a tree to pick at the edges of her medallion. The strange warmth she'd felt before was absent; the metal was cool and heavy against her fingertips. She said, softly, "Are you there?" and felt instantly foolish.

"Um."

She glanced up, not quite hiding a jump at the soft voice. Vax was leaning against a tree-more for support than nonchalance, judging by his lingering pallor-and was watching her. "Sorry. I didn't mean to startle you. I just wanted to thank you again." He brought his good arm up to rub at the scar still visible behind the exposed gouge in his armor. "That would've gone completely to shit if you hadn't been there."

Pike felt a surge of heat in her medallion, dropped it hurriedly to clatter against her breastplate. "It's fine, Vax. Healing is what I do."

Vax's mouth gave a startled little quirk at the edges, and he glanced over his shoulder to the others, who were beginning to gather together in the clearing. "Yeah. You could say that. I'm sorry, by the way."

Pike blinked. "What for?"

For a moment, Vax just stared at her, then gave a little huff of a sigh. "C'mon. Let's get all this shit back where it belongs before my sister runs off with it."

"Yeah," she said, and took a breath, looking beyond him at the others. At her family. "Where it belongs."


End file.
